Today's Labour News

News24 reports that trade union federation Cosatu has come out in strong opposition to the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill (GILAB), which Cabinet approved in May.

It intends to give effect to the recommendations of the Presidential High-Level Review Panel on the State Security Agency (SSA), which was chaired by former minister Sydney Mufamadi, and the State Capture Commission, chaired by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo. The Mufamadi Panel recommended that the SSA should be restructured into a domestic intelligence agency and a foreign intelligence service. However, among its proposed amendments is a provision that the intelligence services "must conduct a vetting investigation in the prescribed manner to determine the security competence" of a number of persons, including people who seek “to establish and operate a non-governmental organisation or religious institution" and seek “to establish a private security company in the Republic". Another clause enables the minister to make regulations relating to "information security and the protection of intelligence", but "information security" is not defined in the bill. Cosatu's Matthew Parks said the federation rejected GILAB's "shocking attempt to undermine the Constitution and its Bill of Rights". He noted that some of the draft bill's provisions were administrative in nature, but said "the bill, as a whole, is contaminated by its shameless attempts to bizarrely introduce a creeping security state through the back door". He called on Cabinet to withdraw the bill, which parliament has yet to begin processing.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Jan Gerber at News24 (subscriber access only)

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